Insights and attitude about PR, journalism and traditional and social media.

Monday, November 5, 2018

Track Record for Our Bonus Set of Predictions

Here's what we're calling our Bonus Set of
Predictions:

1.The
media landscape will change in 2018. We got some details wrong, very wrong.
We expected the AT&T-Time Warner deal would not go through (it did, despite
a DOJ lawsuit) and we expected the Sinclair Broadcasting purchase of Tribune
Media to get approved (it did not). We got one deal right: Disney’s acquisition
of Fox’s TV and movie studios (but not Fox News, Fox Sports and Fox TV
channel). The media world changed in another way, thanks to Netflix, which
receives a lot of coverage, attention and awards. We expect more consolidation
in the media world, more attention to Netflix and other streaming services, and
more layoffs and closings among local media. Grade: B-.

2.Artificial
Intelligence and robotics, now interconnected, will continue to be “hot.” We
got this right.A.I. and robotics got a lot of attention in 2018, and we
expect that to continue in 2019 and beyond, including scare stories about a
“robocalypse” in which A.I.-enabled robots replace human workers as well as
more-reasoned articles that debunk the scare stories. We’re not as worried
because there we think it will open other types of jobs, and that implementing
A.I. seems inevitable because the potential benefits could be so
significant. Grade: A.

3.Innovation
often will come via business models. We expected, for example, that
upscale restaurants with a delivery-only business model (relying on
mobile-ordering apps) would be a bigger trend than it turned out to be. There
was some coverage of that sort of innovation – not so much of technology but in
the use of technology – but it wasn’t a top story. Grade: C.

4.Bitcoin
and blockchain is hitting it big time. This was our surest best of any
of our 2018 predictions. We do expect more bumps in the road for bitcoin and
blockchain, but overall, it will continue in 2019. Grade: A.

5.Is
the internet dying? There have been articles about the internet dying,
including in the October issue of Wired. But it really wasn’t a “thing” in
2018. Grade: C-.

6.The
first amendment becomes a battle-ground issue. We got this wrong. Grade:
F.

7.Millennials’ impact will change how companies market
products and services. Millennials are
having an impact on products and services but there wasn’t as much coverage of
it as we had expected. The layouts of newly built homes is changing, for
example, but it’s not entirely clear that the reason is due to millennials (it
could be because of boomers, too). Overall we overstated the amount of news
coverage this would generate in 2018. Grade:
C-.

8.Smart-Home
automation will gain acceptance but still a niche offering. We said
the biggest aspect would be intelligent personal assistants like Amazon Alexa
and Google Home. Overall, we were on target for this. Grade: B+.

9.The
ranks of unicorn startups will grow but expect a backlash because unicorns are
difficult to sustain. We didn’t see the term “unicorn” as much as we
expected but in October, there was a big splash that Uber’s bankers value the
company at $120 billion. We did see more articles about unrest in Silicon
Valley between employees at startups and regular people who live there — so
that’s something of a backlash. We continue to see the challenge as stated by New
York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo is right when he said, a continued
threat for startups is that just “fewer than 1 percent … end up as $1 billion
companies” and that the Frightful Five (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and
Microsoft) can out-pay key employees (an issue in the A.I. space), out maneuver
or just invest in startups and co-opt them. Grade: C.

10. Religious nonprofits will be able to publicly
make political endorsements, but doing so will change how they are perceived. We
got this wrong for 2018. However, it may be a problem down the road,
particularly with people who oppose the political endorsements made by a
particular religious nonprofit.